Broken Vessels

Schmidt Number: S-5908

On-line since: 30th June, 2013

LECTURE 2

SEPTEMBER 9, 1924

IF WE ARE GOING TO
CONSIDER the mutual concerns of priest and physician, we should look
first at certain phenomena in human life that easily slide over into
the pathological field. These phenomena require a physician's
understanding, since they reach into profound depths, even into the
esoteric realm of religious life. We have to realize that all
branches of human knowledge must be liberated from a certain coarse
attitude that has come into them in this materialistic epoch. We need
only recall how certain phenomena that had been grouped together for
some time under the heading “genius and insanity” have
recently been given a crass interpretation by Lombroso
[see Note 1]
and his school and also by others. I am not pointing to the research
itself — that has its uses — but rather to their way of
looking at things, to what they brought out as “criminal
anthropology,” from studying the skulls of criminals. The
opinions they voiced were not only coarse but extraordinarily
commonplace. Obviously the philistines all got together and decided
what the normal type of human being is. And it was as near as could
possibly be to a philistine! And whatever deviated from this type was
pathological, genius on one side, insanity on the other; each in its
own way was pathological. Since it is quite obvious to anyone with
insight that every pathological characteristic also expresses itself
bodily, it is also obvious that symptoms can be found in bodily
characteristics pointing in one or the other direction. It is a
matter of regarding the symptoms in the proper way. Even an earlobe
can under certain conditions clearly reveal some psychological
peculiarity, because such psychological peculiarities are connected
with the karma that works over from earlier incarnations.

The forces that build
the physical organism in the first seven years of human life are the
same forces by which we think later. So it is important to consider
certain phenomena, not in the customary manner but in a really
appropriate way. We will not be regarding them as pathological
(although they will lead us into aspects of pathology) but rather
will be using them to obtain a view of human life itself.

Let us for a moment
review the picture of a human being that Anthroposophy gives us. The
human being stands before us in a physical body, which has a long
evolution behind it, three preparatory stages before it became an
earthly body — as is described in my book
An Outline of Esoteric Science.
[see Note 2]
This earthly body needs to be understood much more than it is by
today's anatomy and physiology. For the human physical body as it is
today is a true image of the etheric body, which is in its third
stage of development, and of the astral body, which is in its second
stage, and even to a certain degree of the ego organization that
humans first received on earth, which therefore is in its first stage
of development. All of this is stamped like the stamp of a seal upon
the physical body — which makes the physical body
extraordinarily complicated. Only its purely mineral and physical
nature can be understood with the methods of knowledge that are
brought to it today. What the etheric body impresses upon it is not
to be reached at all by those methods. It has to be observed with the
eye of a sculptor so that one obtains pictorial images of cosmic
forces, images that can then be recognized again in the form of the
entire human being and in the forms of the single organs.

The physical human
being is also an image of the breathing and blood circulation. But
the entire dynamic activity that works and weaves through the blood
circulation and breathing system can only be understood if one thinks
of it in musical forms. For instance, there is a musical character to
the formative forces that were poured into the skeletal system and
then became active in a finer capacity in the breathing and
circulation. We can perceive in eurythmy how the octave goes out from
the shoulder blade and proceeds along the bones of the arm. This bone
formation of the arm cannot be understood from a mechanical view of
dynamics, but only from musical insight. We find the interval of the
prime extending from the shoulder blade to the bone of the upper arm,
the humerus, the interval of the second in the humerus, the third
from the elbow to the wrist. We find two bones there because there
are two thirds in music, a larger and a smaller. And so on. In short,
if we want to find the impression of the astral body upon the
physical body, upon the breathing and blood circulation, we are
obliged to bring a musical understanding to it.

Still more difficult
to understand is the ego organization. For this one needs to grasp
the meaning of the first verse of the Gospel of St. John: “In
the beginning was the Word.” “The Word” is meant
there to be understood in a concrete sense, not abstractly, as
commentators of the Gospels usually present it. If this is applied
concretely to the real human being, it provides an explanation of how
the ego organization penetrates the human physical body. You can see
that we ought to add much more to our studies if they are to lead to
a true understanding of the human being. However, I am convinced that
a tremendous amount of material could be eliminated not only from
medical courses but from theological courses too. If one would only
assemble the really essential material, the number of years medical
students, for instance, must spend in their course would not be
lengthened but shortened. Naturally it is thought in materialistic
fashion today that if there's something new to be included, you must
tack another half-year onto the course!

Out of the knowledge
that Anthroposophy gives us, we can say that the human being stands
before us in physical, etheric and astral bodies, and an ego
organization. In waking life these four members of the human
organization are in close connection. In sleep the physical body and
etheric body are together on one side, and the ego organization and
astral body on the other side. With knowledge of this fact we are
then able to say that the greatest variety of irregularities can
appear in the connection of ego organization and astral body with
etheric body and physical body. For instance, we can have: physical
body, etheric body, astral body, ego organization. Then, in the
waking state, the so-called normal relation prevails among these four
members of the human organization.

But it can also happen
that the physical body and etheric body are in some kind of normal
connection and that the astral body sits within them comparatively
normally, but that the ego organization is somehow not properly
sitting within the astral body. Then we have an irregularity that in
the first place confronts us in the waking condition. Such people are
unable to come with their ego organization properly into their astral
body; therefore their feeling life is very much disturbed. They can
even form quite lively thoughts. For thoughts depend, in the main,
upon a normal connection of the astral body with the other bodies.
But whether the sense impressions will be grasped appropriately by
the thoughts depends upon whether the ego organization is united with
the other parts in a normal fashion. If not, the sense impressions
become dim. And in the same measure that the sense impressions fade,
the thoughts become livelier. Sense impressions can appear almost
ghostly, not clear as we normally have them. The soul-life of such
people is flowing away; their sense impressions have something misty
about them, they seem to be continually vanishing. At the same time
their thoughts have a lively quality and tend to become more intense,
more colored, almost as if they were sense impressions
themselves.

When such people
sleep, their ego organization is not properly within the astral body,
so that now they have extraordinarily strong experiences, in fine
detail, of the external world around them. They have experiences,
with their ego and astral body both outside their physical and
etheric bodies, of that part of the world in which they live —
for instance, the finer details of the plants or an orchard around
their house. Not what they see during the day, but the delicate
flavor of the apples, and so forth. That is really what they
experience. And in addition, pale thoughts that are after-effects in
the astral body from their waking life.

You see, it is
difficult if you have such a person before you. And you may encounter
such people in all variations in the most manifold circumstances of
life. You may meet them in your vocation as physician or as priest
— or the whole congregation may encounter them. You can find
them in endless variety, for instance, in a town. Today the physician
who finds such a person in an early stage of life makes the
diagnosis: psychopathological impairment. To modern physicians that
person is a psychopathological impairment case who is at the
borderline between health and illness; whose nervous system, for
instance, can be considered to be on a pathological level. Priests,
if they are well-schooled (let us say a Benedictine or Jesuit or
Barnabite or the like; ordinary parish priests are sometimes not so
well-schooled), will know from their esoteric background that the
things such a person tells them can, if properly interpreted, give
genuine revelations from the spiritual world, just as one can have
from a really insane person. But the insane person is not able to
interpret them; only someone who comprehends the whole situation can
do so. Thus you can encounter such a person if you are a physician,
and we will see how to regard this person medically from an
anthroposophical point of view. Thus you can also encounter such a
person if you are a priest — and even the entire congregation
can have such an encounter.

But now perhaps the
person develops further; then something quite special appears. The
physical and etheric bodies still have their normal connection. But
now there begins to be a stronger pull of the ego organization,
drawing the astral body to itself, so that the ego organization and
astral body are now more closely bound together. And neither of them
enters properly into the physical and etheric bodies. Then the
following can take place: the person becomes unable to control the
physical and etheric bodies properly from the astral body and ego.
The person is unable to push the astral body and ego organization
properly into the external senses, and therefore, every now and then,
becomes “senseless.” Sense impressions in general fade
away and the person falls into a kind of dizzy dream state. But then
in the most varied way moral impulses can appear with special
strength. The person can be confused and also extremely argumentative
if the rest of the organism is as just described.

Now physicians find in
such a case that physical and biochemical changes have taken place in
the sense organs and the nerve substance. They will find, although
they may take slight notice of them, great abnormalities in the
ductless glands and their hormone secretion, in the adrenal glands,
and the glands that are hidden in the neck as small glands within the
thyroid gland. In such a case there are changes particularly in the
pituitary gland and the pineal gland. These are more generally
recognized than are the changes in the nervous system and in the
general area of the senses.

And now the priest
comes in contact with such a person. The person confesses to
experiencing an especially strong feeling of sin, stronger than
people normally have. The priest can learn very much from such
individuals, and Catholic priests do. They learn what an extreme
consciousness of sin can be like, something that is so weakly
developed in most human beings. Also in such a person the love of
one's neighbor can become tremendously intense, so much so that the
person can get into great trouble because of it, which will then be
confessed to the priest.

The situation can
develop still further. The physical body can remain comparatively
isolated because the etheric body — from time to time or even
permanently — does not entirely penetrate it, so that now the
astral and etheric bodies and the ego organization are closely united
with one another and the physical organism is separate from them. To
use the current materialistic terms (which we are going to outgrow as
the present course of study progresses), such people are in most
cases said to be severely mentally retarded individuals. They are
unable from their soul-spiritual individuality to control their
physical limbs in any direction, not even in the direction of their
own will. Such people pull their physical organism along, as it were,
after themselves. A person who is in this condition in early
childhood, from birth, is also diagnosed as mentally retarded. In the
present stage of earth evolution, when all three members — ego
organization, astral organization, and etheric body — are
separated from the physical, and the lone physical body is dragged
along after them, the person cannot perceive, cannot be active,
cannot be illumined by the ego organization, astral body, and etheric
body. So experiences are dim and the person goes about in a physical
body as if it were anesthetized. This is extreme mental retardation,
and one has to think how at this stage one can bring the other bodies
down into the physical organism. Here it can be a matter of
educational measures, but also to a great extent of external
therapeutic measures.

But now the priest can
be quite amazed at what such a person will confess. Priests may
consider themselves very clever, but even thoroughly educated priests
— there really are such men in Catholicism; one must not
underestimate it — they pay attention if a so-called sick
person comes to them and says, “The things you pronounce from
the pulpit aren't worth much. They don't add up to anything, they
don't reach up to the dwelling place of God, they don't have any
worth except external worth. One must really rest in God with one's
whole being.” That's the kind of thing such people say. In
every other area of their life they behave in such a way that one
must consider them to be extremely retarded, but in conversation with
their priest they come out with such speeches. They claim to know
inner religious life more intimately than someone who speaks of it
professionally; they feel contempt for the professional. They call
their experience “rest in God.” And you can see that the
priest must find ways and means to relate to what such a person
— one can say patient, or one can use other terms — to
what such a human being is experiencing within.

One has to have a
sensitive understanding for the fact that pathological conditions can
be found in all spheres of life, for the fact that some people may be
quite unable at the present time to find their way in the
physical-sense world, quite unable to be the sort of human being that
external life now requires all of us to be. We are all necessarily to
a certain degree philistines as regards external life. But such
people as I am describing are not in condition to travel along our
philistine paths; they have to travel other ways. Priests must be
able to feel what they can give such a person, how to connect what
they can give out of themselves with what that other human being is
experiencing. Very often such a person is simply called “one of
the queer ones.” This demands an understanding of the subtle
transition from illness to spirituality.

Our study can go
further. Think what happens when a person goes through this entire
sequence in the course of life. At some period the person is in a
condition where only the ego organization has loosened itself from
the other members of the organism. In a later period the person
advances to a condition where neither ego nor astral enter the
physical or etheric bodies. Still later, the person enters a
condition where the physical body separates from the other bodies.
The person only goes through this sequence if the first condition,
perhaps in childhood, which is still normal, already shows a tendency
to lose the balance of the four members of the organism. If the
physician comes upon such a person destined to go through all these
four stages — the first very slightly abnormal, the others as I
have pictured them — the physician will find there is
tremendous instability and something must be done about it. Usually
nothing can be done. Sometimes the physician prescribes intensive
treatment; it accomplishes nothing. Perhaps later the physician is
again in contact with this person and finds that the first unstable
condition has advanced to the next, as I described it with the sense
impressions becoming vague and the thoughts highly colored.
Eventually the physician finds the excessively strong consciousness
of sin; naturally a physician does not want to take any notice of
that, for now the symptoms are beginning to play over into the soul
realm. Usually it is at this time that the person finally gets in
touch with a priest, particularly when the fourth stage becomes
apparent.

Individuals who go
through these stages — it is connected with their karma, their
repeated earth lives — have purely out of their deep intuition
developed a wonderful terminology for all this. Especially if they
have gone through the stages in sequence, with the first stage almost
normal, they are able to speak in a wonderful way about what they
experience. They say, for instance, when they are still quite young,
if the labile condition starts between seventeen and nineteen years:
human beings must know themselves. And they demand complete knowledge
of themselves. Now with their ego organization separated, they come
of their own initiative to an active meditative life. Very often they
call this “active prayer,” “active
meditation,” and they are grateful when some well-schooled
priest gives them instruction about prayer. Then they are entirely
absorbed in prayer, and they are experiencing in it what they now
begin to describe by a wonderful terminology. They look back at their
first stage and call what they perceive “the first dwelling
place of God,” because their ego has not entirely penetrated
the other members of their organism, so to a certain extent they are
seeing themselves from within, not merely from without. This
perception from within increases; it becomes, as it were, a larger
space: “the first dwelling place of God.”

What next appears,
what I have described from another point of view, is richer; it is
more inwardly detailed. They see much more from within: “the
second dwelling place of God.” When the third stage is reached,
the inner vision is extraordinarily beautiful, and such a person
says, “I see the third dwelling place of God; it is
tremendously magnificent, with spiritual beings moving within
it.” This is inner vision, a powerful, glorious vision of a
world woven by spirit: “the third dwelling place of God,”
or “the House of God.” There are variations in the words
used. When they reach the fourth stage, they no longer want advice
about active meditation, for usually they have reached the view that
everything will be given them through grace and they must wait. They
talk about passive prayer, passive meditation, that they must not
pray out of their own initiative, for it will come to them if God
wants to give it to them. Here the priest must have a fine instinct
for recognizing when this stage passes over into the next. For now
these people speak of “rest-prayer,” during which they do
nothing at all; they let God hold sway in them. That is how they
experience “the fourth dwelling place of God.”

Sometimes from the
descriptions they give at this stage, from what — if we speak
medically — such “patients” say, priests can really
learn a tremendous amount of esoteric theology. If they are good
interpreters, the theological detail becomes clear to them — if
they listen very carefully to what such “patients” tell
them, to what they know. Much of what is taught in theology,
particularly Catholic pastoral theology, is founded on what various
enlightened, trained confessors have heard from certain penitents who
have undergone this sequence of development.

At this point ordinary
conceptions of health and illness cease to have any meaning. If such
a man is hidden away in an office, or if such a woman becomes an
housewife who must spend her days in the kitchen or something similar
in bourgeois everyday life, these people become really insane, and
behave outwardly in such a way that they can only be regarded as
insane. If a priest notices at the right moment how things are
developing and arranges for them to live in appropriate surroundings,
they can develop the four stages in proper order. Through such
patients, the enlightened confessor is able to look into the
spiritual world in a modern way but similarly to the Greek priests,
who learned about the spiritual world from the Pythians, who imparted
all kinds of revelations concerning the spiritual world through
earthly smoke and vapor.
[see Note 3]
What sense would there be today
in writing a thesis on the pathological aspect of the Greek Pythians?
It could certainly be done and it would even be correct, but it would
have no meaning in a higher sense. For as a matter of fact, very much
of what flowed in a magnificent way from Greek theology into the
entire cultural life of Greece originated in the revelations of the
Pythians. As a rule, the Pythians were individuals who had come
either to this third stage or even to the fourth stage.

But we can think of a
personality in a later epoch who went through these stages under the
wise direction of her confessors, so that she could devote herself
undisturbed to her inner visions. Something very wonderful developed
for her, which indeed also remained to a certain degree pathological.
Her life was not just a concern of the physician or of the priest but
a concern of the entire Church. The Church pronounced her a saint
after her death. This was St. Teresa.
[see Note 4]
This was approximately her path.

You see, one must
examine such things as this if one wants to discover what will give
medicine and theology a real insight into human nature. One must be
prepared to go far beyond the usual category of ideas, for they lose
their value. Otherwise one can no longer differentiate between a
saint and a fool, between a madman and a genius, and can no longer
distinguish any of the others except a normal dyed-in-the-wool
average citizen.

This is a view of the
human being that must first be met with understanding; then it can
really lead to fundamental esoteric knowledge. But it can also be
tremendously enlightening in regard to psychological abnormalities as
well as to physical abnormalities and physical illnesses. Certain
conditions are necessary for these stages to appear. There has to be
a certain consistency of the person's ego so that it does not
completely penetrate the organism. Also there must be a certain
consistency of the astral body: if it is not fine, as it was in St.
Teresa, if it is coarse, the result will be different. With St.
Teresa, because of the delicacy of her ego organization and astral
body, certain physical organs in the lower body had been formed with
the same fragile quality.

But it can happen that
the ego organization and astral body are quite coarse and yet they
have the same characteristic as above. Such an individual can be
comparatively normal and show only the physical correlation: then it
is only a physical illness. One could say, on the one hand there can
be a St. Teresa constitution with its visions and poetic beauty, and
on the other hand its physical counterimage in diseased abdominal
organs, which in the course of this second person's life is not
reflected in the ego and astral organization.

All these things must
be spoken about and examined. For those who hold responsibility as
physicians or priests are confronted by these things, and they must
be equal to the challenge. Theological activity only begins to be
effective if theologians are prepared to cope with such phenomena.
And physicians only begin to be healers if they also are prepared to
deal with such symptoms.

This is Copyrighted material that is provided for research and study
on the Internet at the Rudolf Steiner Archive. We encourage everyone
to support Anthroposophy, the anthroposophical movement, and the
anthroposophic community and its publishing initiatives by
purchasing this book from one of the following resources: